HTC VP of Design and others formally charged with leaking company secrets

Employees also allegedly falsified expenses, took $1.12 Million from kickbacks.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the six HTC employees arrested in August for allegedly leaking company secrets, taking kickbacks, and falsifying expenses have now been indicted by prosecutors in Taiwan.

Among the six is HTC Vice President of Design Thomas Chien, who is being charged with leaking an unreleased "smartphone interface design." Prosecutors allege Chien's plan was to start a new company with the individuals to whom he allegedly leaked the design in Beijing. Chien and five other HTC employees are also being charged with breach of trust for allegedly taking bribes from suppliers and falsifying $1.12 million in expense reports. Three people from the unidentified suppliers were also charged. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison in Taiwan.

While we found the HTC One to be a great piece of hardware, HTC as a company is beginning to look more and more like a sinking ship with all of the high-level departures. Executives have been leaving the company in droves, with the CEO of HTC Asia, chief operating officer, chief product officer, global retail marketing manager, director of digital marketing, and product strategy manager all departing in 2013. HTC has also had to deal with the retail flop of its high-profile HTC First, AKA "The Facebook Phone." The company's profits have been tumbling for some time, and it posted its first quarterly loss in October.

HTC still has flagship products in the works, in spite of the shake-ups—we've started to hear rumblings of an "HTC One 2." However, as Forbes points out in that link, the key to HTC's survival likely is centered around its successes or failures in the Chinese market, not the North American one. A new flagship model isn't necessarily what the company needs right now in a market already crowded with flagships.

Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron.amadeo@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo

I love my HTC phone. I am still running strong on my Incredible. I can't believe the phone lasted this long. There are only two things wrong with it. One being the battery starting to die, but I don't really I have any right to complain about a battery that lasted almost four years without any hiccups. The other seems to be an issue with Android and the dreaded "Low on Space" issue, though, this could probably be solved with a simple format.

Does HTC make anything else? Samsung is, well, Samsung, LG is pretty much the same, same goes for Sony, Google owns Motorola...

Everyone else can afford to throw money away because of diverse business strategy, this is why Sony and MS can go at it in the game console industry, and one of the reasons that Nintendo may go the way of Sega at some point.

HTC needs to execute, now, but they have all this going on, and in the design department to boot. Sigh.

Three people from the unidentified suppliers were also charged. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison in Taiwan.

Quote:

I find it ridiculous that in many countries someone who leaks information tends to be sacked and charged but the people who buy it rarely if ever seem to be penalised in the slightest

If the make a deterrant to purchasing such things that were severe enough that no company could financially afford to risk it them you would solve the problem in one move

Buying information isn't always a crime, depending on what you know about the source. Oftentimes, crossing jurisdictional boundaries is enough to make it not a crime in the locality where it happened, as well. Now, that sort of thing is getting cleaned up real fast in China and, I suppose, Asia in general.

The scale of this is probably what ensured they were caught, though. The leaking of information alone is bad enough but it sounds as though they funded it with flawed expense reports. I mean, come on, use your brain! Auditors will find that kind of thing quite easily, leading to the information leak. If the idiots had simply paid their own bills, they may well have gotten away with it.

one of the reasons that Nintendo may go the way of Sega at some point.

If they carried on losing money at the rate of their worst ever loss, it would take 30 years to burn through all the cash on hand they have.

It's off-topic, but that's what people said about RIM/Blackberry just a short year ago, and last quarter they reported a 4.4 billion losses. Nintendo sell their games on their own console, and with the number of Wii U they've sold to be so abysmal, they definitely will have to change their business strategy down the road. When or how that will happen is anyone's guess.